Israel’s Legislature Votes War Against Syria

ERIC ZUESSE

The key decision now will be made by Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

On May 1st, Al Masdar News headlined “Netanyahu is granted the ability to wage war without the Knesset”, and reported that Israel’s Knesset or legislature had voted late on Monday night, April 30th, to hand entirely to the far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to his extremely far-right Minister of Defense Avigdor Liberman (see featured image) the decision as to whether or when to invade any country — the main actual target is Syria, but Iran and Lebanon are also in Israel’s gunsights.

Israel’s newspaper Haaretz reported about this on April 30th, while explaining that this legislation was “transferring responsibility for declaring war from the full cabinet to the smaller security cabinet. The joint committee of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee rejected his request but it was later voted for by the Knesset plenum.”

The real change that the new law introduces is to transfer Israel’s war-making decisions away from both the Knesset and the less-invasion-prone members of Israel’s Cabinet, to only the two most invasion-seeking officials: Netanyahu and Liberman — in other words, actually, to Netanyahu alone.

On April 17th, Zero Hedge bannered “Trump Is Assembling An Arab Army To Replace US Troops In Syria” and reported that U.S. President Donald Trump was trying to arrange a Sunni Arab army from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and UAE to invade Syria so that U.S. allies will take over the country — or at least the areas that now are controlled by U.S.-allied forces in Syria. Israel might participate in the invasion, but Trump’s team knows that for Syrians to be controlled by Jews would be a nonstarter, whereas a significant percentage (though still only a minority) of Syrians would be willing to be ruled by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-led regimes. Trump then would withdraw American forces because Syrians would be almost as opposed to an imposed Christian regime as to an imposed Jewish one. Placing Syria under the effective control by the Saud family would be still placing it effectively under the control of the U.S. regime, though only indirectly, via the Saudi-selected stand-ins.

Consequently, the Knesset vote on Monday to place Israel’s invasion-decision totally under the control of Netanyahu and Liberman, without participation from the Knesset nor from other members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet, opens the door to an invasion anytime that Netanyahu, Trump, and whatever Sunni Arab leaders that Trump can muster, decide to do it. This is a gateway opened, to facilitate such an invasion whenever those leaders might agree on the date to do it.

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